[gwnn]

nullve, on 2015-October-22, 16:51, said:

I'm just pointing to what appears to be a logical possibility here.

OK. I grant you that (I never contested that, or if I did, I misspoke). I think others in this thread also granted you that without comment.

It is logically possible for people (even all of the accused) to behave like this way from unconscious causes, in an analogous way to how pigeons become superstitious, horses learn to respond to microcues from their owners, and how poker players drink water. It is all logically possible. In fact, even Piekarek-Smirnov (who have come forward and confessed) could be innocent, they might have internalized some blame at an unconscious level, perhaps rationalizing the lynch mob's behaviour (why else would they be coming for us if we were innocent?), perhaps accepting that if Wladow-Elinescu were guilty, all Germans must be cheating, perhaps from some residual guilt for World War II.

And what about the doctors? Coughing a given amount of times is by no means an unnatural gesture. I can't see why it couldn't be the result of operant conditioning. Once you realize that you use slightly different parts of your brain during bidding and during play, it suddenly becomes clear why they were only coughing during the auction period -- there could have been simply an unconscious physical link being formed between the "bidding" part and the coughing gag reflex. What else? The accusers are just victims of mass hysteria for suspecting that 1 cough=clubs, 2 coughs=diamonds, ... could not have evolved over thousands of boards. Then again, we should apply the same analysis for the behaviour of the accusers, who are conditioned from the media (perhaps from super-hero movies) to fight for justice and look for supervillains.

I am not even being facetious. I feel pretty confident that all of these logical possibilities exist. I just think they are a little bit silly. Especially as you see evidence that a lot of the behaviour is conscious (I mentioned already the adjustments in my post #24 that you have carefully ignored) -- evidence, not logical certainty.

Anyway, any other logical possibilities you would like me to entertain? How about the logical possibility that the moon landing was faked? That Charlemagne is a hoax? How about the possibility that cancer (any cancer, of course) can be cured by an overdose of vitamin C? Do you see any way we could go about proving that these are not logically possible? I certainly cannot. I cannot see any logical way to do it, and certainly not for the superstitious pigeons that we are, drifting between our animal instincts and social conditioning.

[nullve]

I think there's plenty incentive to cheat at bridge and I'm not enough of a conspiracy theorist to doubt that P-S are guilty when they've already confessed. The case of W-E is interesting to me, because it seemed to me that I was one of the few that actually bothered to look at the video evidence to see if Woolsey's "verdicts" in this thread

http://bridgewinners...ads-conclusion/

matched what was going on at the table. (And please take a careful look at the methodology and apply it to a pair using Bird-Anthias leads or something else that the world isn't yet familiar with. You could even apply it to Woolsey-Stewart, who seldom lead from a 4-card suit vs. NT, but do not disclose that on their CC. (I'm not saying that they should; it's just that it's a pretty unusual agreement.))

gwnn, on 2015-October-22, 20:58, said:

you see evidence that a lot of the behaviour is conscious (I mentioned already the adjustments in my post #24 that you have carefully ignored) -- evidence, not logical certainty.

I think you've missed the point here. Drinking from a bottle at poker may well be conscious behaviour and a tell at the same time, since the player isn't aware that he's revealing anything about his hand. Adjusting the tray may be similar, although it even to me looks like pointless behaviour unless the intention is indeed to signal something.

Quote

Anyway, any other logical possibilities you would like me to entertain?

Yes. Please entertain the logical possibility that the alleged cheating methods of W-E, F-S, F-N, P-S and B-Z were all devised by your proverbial 5-year old.

[gwnn]

nullve, on 2015-October-23, 02:00, said:

I think you've missed the point here. Drinking from a bottle at poker may well be conscious behaviour and a tell at the same time, since the player isn't aware that he's revealing anything about his hand. Adjusting the tray may be similar, although it even to me looks like pointless behaviour unless the intention is indeed to signal something.

I think you've still failed to read my post on this. In it, you will have read that I understand that adjusting the bids/the tray could just be a question of "it doesn't feel right that the bids are far apart" - sort of like a victim of OCD, where the patient feels that (say) unless they don't wipe their shoes exactly 12 times before entering the house, they have failed somehow and they will be accompanied by this weird feeling (not dissimilar to the feeling we get when we ride a bike without a helmet), despite the fact that they rationally see no reason to do so (there are even more bizarre behaviours such as wiping the doorframe with their hands on either side, and so on). All of this might have evolved unconsciously, as I said already. I do not buy it, as I said already. I do not think a few thousand boards are sample enough.

Quote

Yes. Please entertain the logical possibility that the alleged cheating methods of W-E, F-S, F-N, P-S and B-Z were all devised by your proverbial 5-year old.

Is your point that their methods are too embarrassingly simple to have been devised? I have thought of these issues before and there are at least five different explanations for it:

• Cheaters are simply stupider than non-cheaters, so they come up with something embarrassingly simple
  
• These methods look so innocent that people will never suspect them (or so they think). I can't say they were wrong
  
• You need some very simple signal that is easy to interpret. You could obviously encode stuff in hexadecimal but that is a lot more error prone. For example, A=1010 would be cough-pause-cough-pause but you would need a certain amount of concentration/training making proper length pauses (otherwise maybe he thinks you meant 9=1001), both in making it and in interpreting it
  
• (many people made this point already) we are simply catching the bad cheaters. the good cheaters have better methods, perhaps even ones that are impossible to find.
  
• Cheating and counting to 13 both take a certain amount of energy. The cheaters are simply taking a wise choice in favouring the counting to take up most of their brains.
  
• am I at 5 yet? if not, how about this? having a long discussion about possible cheating methods/random seeds/encryption keys is not feasible. For one, what if someone walks in the room? But most importantly, nobody wants to feel like they are this evil genius in a smoke-filled dark room coming up with cheating methods. The shorter these discussions, the better -> it is much more likely to come up with something very simple.
  
• One for the road: even a tiny edge can help you a lot, and you don't need kilobytes of data transmission to give you that tiny edge.
  
• OK I promise this is the last one: perhaps if they gave themselves more than a tiny edge, they'd feel it impossible to rationalize (the famous justification of "everybody is doing it, we are just levelling the playing field").

[gwnn]

One more thing: for FS and FN, both players apparently evolved the same unconscious tells and the same interpretations independently. Of course it is not independent in the strictest sense, but I don't see why they could not have evolved completely different codes for the two sides, if it is all unconscious.

[barmar]

If the standard for reasonable belief were "logical certainty", our prisons would be practically empty. While we may occasionally fall afoul of fallacies because we don't realize how many unconscious behaviors we have, or we base decisions on statistical intuitions that are known to be poor, some things are so blatant that it seems hard to attribute them to anything other than deliberate action. We have to draw the line somewhere, because the alternative is never knowing what's true or false. You simply can't wait for certainty.

[nullve]

gwnn, on 2015-October-23, 02:25, said:

Is your point that their methods are too embarrassingly simple to have been devised?

No, all of your points 1.-8. are logical possibilities and I'm also aware of the (controversial) R-S case: very clever man (Reese), stupid method. But commenting on 1.-8. whith only W-E, F-S, F-N, P-S and B-Z (who, if 7. is true, must all be WC or nearly WC) in mind:

1. Stupider than WC non-cheaters, maybe, but hardly so stupid they couldn't all have come up with something vastly better in every way.
2. Hardly risk assessment of the same quality that they routinely make at bridge table.
3.-7. Probably true. But 'simple' doesn't imply 'easy to crack'.
8. Probably true, but has to do with the decision to cheat to begin with, not the choice of method.

[nullve]

gwnn, on 2015-October-23, 02:28, said:

One more thing: for FS and FN, both players apparently evolved the same unconscious tells and the same interpretations independently. Of course it is not independent in the strictest sense, but I don't see why they could not have evolved completely different codes for the two sides, if it is all unconscious.

I stumbled across this when reading about RPS:

Quote

A previous experiment found that players unconsciously mimic the actions of their opponents - a surprising result because advantage is usually gained by acting
differently. (http://www.bbc.com/n...onment-27228416)

So if we can unconsciously mimic the actions of our opponents at RPS, maybe we can also unconsciously mimic our partners' actions at bridge. I don't know.

EDIT: It seems like phenomenon of "mirroring" (https://en.wikipedia...28psychology%29) is what I'm looking for.

[Thiros]

OT: Best RPS video ever

[yunling]

I admit that I did not consider the consciousness of the behaviour when posting my thread on BW, but I don't think it is a useful defense against cheating allegations.
1. I agree that when people cannot really generate "random" numbers——even computers use seed to form them so it is not trully random, but using an important charateristic of one's hand as seed is suspicious, since it is something you are quite aware of during the bidding.
2. Different people have different uncommon behaviours at the table, but for a pair of players, the chance for two of them to make gestures with a similar pattern unconsciously, is very small.
3. If us, after going through a few hundred of hands, can find out that a player's gesture is related to some features of the hand, I believe his partner, after playing for years with him, can find it out as well. So when you have noticed it but still taking advantage of that instead of telling your partner to stop the behaviour, then it is a serious ethical problem even if it is not full collusive cheating.

[nullve]

yunling, on 2015-October-23, 20:48, said:

2. Different people have different uncommon behaviours at the table, but for a pair of players, the chance for two of them to make gestures with a similar pattern unconsciously, is very small.

If mirroring (i.e. subconscious imitation) takes place, that chance might depend on how many boards they've played together.

[gwnn]

nullve, on 2015-October-23, 10:07, said:

3.-7. Probably true. But 'simple' doesn't imply 'easy to crack'.

Why not?

Also this point doesn't apply at all for number 4. I said bad/good methods, not simple/complicated.

Anyway, I did not say that all 8 of them are likely or particularly convincing (although some of them I find quite decent), just that it is easy to find rationalizations and any counterargument you bring can only decrease their probability, not nullify it.

[gwnn]

nullve, on 2015-October-23, 02:00, said:

I think there's plenty incentive to cheat at bridge and I'm not enough of a conspiracy theorist to doubt that P-S are guilty when they've already confessed.

I did not say anything about a conspiracy (for example, one of them had a child kidnapped and was forced to falsely confess), but about an honest but mistaken belief they had about themselves. Certainly you must agree that it is a logical possibility that they were just both in a cognitive dissonance and concluded that they themselves must be the cheaters, not the lynch mob the wrongful accusers. If anything, this is a more likely scenario than yours since we (the public) have no convincing video about them cheating and all we have now is their confession. False confessions are well documented while these spontaneous mathematical codes between unwitting participants is just completely hypothetical and strains credulity (your case requires analogy to horses and pigeons, for one). I think neither of these logical possibilities is particularly likely but I am not sure why you are concentrating on your pet hypothesis instead of the rather mundane one of a false confession.

[nullve]

gwnn, on 2015-October-24, 06:00, said:

Why not?

http://bridgewinners...od-of-cheating/

Seems simple enough.

Quote

Also this point doesn't apply at all for number 4. I said bad/good methods, not simple/complicated.

Yes, sorry. But then my point is that even the worst cheaters among WC or near WC pairs would be able to come up with something vastly better.

Quote

it is easy to find rationalizations and any counterargument you bring can only decrease their probability, not nullify it.

Agree.

[gwnn]

Yes LOL it is simple, except for learning the 16-digit code by heart and applying it and doing the maths. Most bridge players were complaining that Slawinsky leads were too hard for them to try! Lol. And this goes against my arguments about a necessarily short discussion period and a relatively low footprint (you don't eant to write down the code anywhere for example) and conservation of energy. Simple lol. They would need several hours of cheating practice and even then you'd run the risk of messing it up on the second week of the tournament at 11PM.

[gwnn]

nullve, on 2015-October-24, 06:25, said:

Yes, sorry. But then my point is that even the worst cheaters among WC or near WC pairs would be able to come up with something vastly better.

Ok good luck. Like I said, my argument 2 is working with a lot of people.

[nullve]

gwnn, on 2015-October-24, 06:11, said:

I did not say anything about a conspiracy

No, you didn't. I just didn't want to come off as someone incapable of having normal beliefs.

Quote

Certainly you must agree that it is a logical possibility that they were just both in a cognitive dissonance and concluded that they themselves must be the cheaters, not the lynch mob the wrongful accusers.

Yes.

Quote

If anything, this is a more likely scenario than yours since we (the public) have no convincing video about them cheating and all we have now is their confession.

Good point. I agree.

[nullve]

gwnn, on 2015-October-24, 06:45, said:

Yes LOL it is simple, except for learning the 16-digit code by heart and applying it and doing the maths. Most bridge players were complaining that Slawinsky leads were too hard for them to try! Lol.

Sorry, but I find it hard to believe that committing 16 (or 100) digits to memory (using e.g. the method of loci) and calculate e.g. 1+2 or 3+3 modulo 4 is somehow beyond the the ability of some near-WC players.

Quote

And this goes against my arguments about a necessarily short discussion period and a relatively low footprint (you don't eant to write down the code anywhere for example) and conservation of energy. Simple lol.

I don't understand why the discussion period needs to be short or why they would have to write down anything (if they're using the method of loci, say). And you can't lol me into believing that the method is too energy-draining, either.

Quote

They would need several hours of cheating practice

Is that obvious? So what?

Quote

and even then you'd run the risk of messing it up on the second week of the tournament at 11PM.

As with any legal agreement.

[gwnn]

I think we are going around in circles by now and it all just boils down to our subjective sense of the plausibility of the various scenarios. I'm not one to fight for the last word but I also don't want to dramatically say "this is the last time I read or write here!" because honestly I do think these hypotheses are interesting and thinking about them is a worthwhile endeavor, although not quite in the sense of exonerating them but just as an intellectual exercise. I will, however, try to only post if I have something new to post.

I am mainly writing this preamble about going in circles because I feel like I have answered your questions already in posts prior.

Quote

Sorry, but I find it hard to believe that committing 16 (or 100) digits to memory (using e.g. the method of loci) and calculate e.g. 1+2 or 3+3 modulo 4 is somehow beyond the the ability of some near-WC players.

Like I said, even world class players have a difficulty understanding Slawinsky leads and odd/even carding, even though those are clearly documented and you can explain them in about 15 seconds to an average 5 year-old (you can explain odd-even in a 2x1 matrix and Slawinsky in a 2x2 matrix, both of them only containing 1's and 0's). This is written in the quoted portion of text already so I take it you don't believe me. I heard from Justin Lall that "nobody understands Slawinsky" and Fred said in one of the deals of the week about his Bermuda Bowl run how he had trouble understanding or parsing odd/even carding. It is telling that you find hard to believe that grown men have difficulty with basic algebra but you find it easy to believe that they will behave just as a horse or a pigeon.

Quote

I don't understand why the discussion period needs to be short or why they would have to write down anything (if they're using the method of loci, say). And you can't lol me into believing that the method is too energy-draining, either.

This is also something I explained above. Average cheaters have a conscience as well and it will feel weird for them to have a daily training schedule that looks like
12:00-13:00 Gym
13:00-15:00 bidding agreements
15:00-17:00 defensive training
17:00-18:00 declarer play
18:00-19:00 training of secret, evil method in a dark, secluded area

It just feels nefarious to them and I think normal people, even with a slightly slanted moral compass, will want to feel like they are primarily bridge players, not bridge players who exercise their cheating method daily. They have to decide on what they want to spend most of their energy: training and applying bridge skills or training and applying cheating methods. I think most people will choose 99+% of their energy on counting out suits and planning squeezes instead of counting taps on the table and planning the next illicit message.

Quote

As with any legal agreement.

Indeed. So, unless they have a very simple, idiot-proof cheating system, they are introducing an extra layer of risk of disasters: Not only can they have a big disagreement about bidding, but also a disagreement about their illicit signals. In fact, by wasting too much time/resources on their cheating, they will increase the chances of bidding disasters while introducing an extra layer of uncertainty that is related to retaining the secret code and doing all the cute little maths.

[nullve]

Thx gwnn, I've enjoyed discussing with you.

[nullve]

https://en.wikipedia..._signaling_game
http://philsci-archi...wisLabSynth.pdf